And you need a delivery style that’s consistent with who you are (and not some other famous speaker who you’re trying to imitate).

That’s a tall order.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if you could see how other speakers put this all together when they present?

TED

TED began in 1984 “as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.” In short, big wigs from these three industries got together to give talks and presentations about the cool things they were doing.

The first TED events were annual conferences in Long Beach, California, and in the UK. Since then, the vision of TED has expanded. You’ll now find smaller TED events in cities all over the world and many of the talks are archived on the TED website.

So who speaks at TED conferences? People who are doing interesting things in technology, entertainment, and design, of course, but also people in government, education, business, and the non-profit sector. Speakers have included well-recognized folks like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, chef Jamie Oliver, anthropologist Jane Goodall, and Al Gore. You’ll also find inspiring, insightful, and entertaining talks by people you’ve never heard of.

The talks range in length from as short as three minutes to about eighteen minutes and the site has a clever filter feature that let’s you find talks by length, topic, popularity, or rating. If you’re looking for some quick inspiration, you can find it on the TED site.

Just like SlideShare, you can create a free account on TED and save your favorite talks and add comments below the talks.